Addition by subtraction?

Barclays Wealth hires away "Ms Piggy" from a local HK bank who was head of private banking and trust services.

While Ms Piggy was a fine private banker, her mismanagement of the trust business is legendary in certain circles. Never had a profitable year under her direction and turnstile of trust dept heads. A fine brand name and platform but management lacked the sensitivity and insight to drive the business....strange considering the success of of their parent group in the trust business. A little inbreeding would have helped. The business was treated as an afterthought to the banking business instead of an integral part of it. Not really her fault....tells you about the mentality and nickle & dime attitude of senior management.

Another lession for CEO's not to put bankers/investment people in charge of the trust business. You wouldn't put David Beckham on your Olympic water polo team just because he excelled in his field and was a good athlete would you? No, you get a real water polo player and you don't let your football coach hire the polo player either.

Now that she has trusts out of her portfolio, I'm sure Ms Piggy will do wonders for Barclays.

Lot's of movement in the smaller trust companies

After a round of socializing (read: gossiping), it appears that Amicorp went through a major senior reshuffle in HK.......then Credence Trust (part of the OIL group) did too in HK and Singapore and now Equity Trust too!

This seems to be a perpetual problem for these small players in that they inevitably lose all their good people, partly because of pay and stature, but overwhelming due to mismanagement.

Then again, these may be good times for these smaller players to beef up the team when the employment scene is a buyer's market......but alas they usually hire the wrong people because they are a poor judge of talent.

Run Raoul Run

As previously blogged here: http://trustprofessioninasia.blogspot.com/2008/11/ubs-used-to-be-smart-or-uve-been.html, the US case against Raoul has escalated and now he has been declared a fugitive! How many organizations can boast that they have a US fugitive on their payroll and management committee?

As UBS claims to be closing all accounts owned by US persons, (as if all accounts beneficially owned by US persons are truly recorded as being owned by US persons!) and possibly face a [Edit: US$780 Million] fine from the IRS. Add some rumoured heavy 09 losses and it all adds up to be another nightmare year.

Implosion eminent